Menella Bute Smedley
Menella Bute Smedley (14 November 1820 - 25 May 1877) was an English poet and novelist. Life Smedley was born in Wandsworth, South London, the 2nd youngest of 5 children of Rev. Edward Smedley and his wife, Mary. Her first novel, The Maiden Aunt, originally appeared in Sharpe's London Magazine under the pen name "S.M." In 1848 and 1849 it was published as a single volume in both England and the United States, and was reprinted in 1856. A relative of Lewis Carroll, she wrote some minor novels and books of poems, including the anonymous, The Story of Queen Isabel, and other verses, 1863. She translated the old German ballad The Shepherd of the Giant Mountains into English blank verse in 1846. Roger Lancelyn Green in the Times Literary Supplement on 1 March 1957, and later in The Lewis Carroll Handbook (1962), suggested that Carroll’s "Jabberwocky" may have been inspired by this work.Martin Gardner, The Annotated Alice. New York: Norton, 2000. p. 154, n. 42. Peter Lucas suggested in particular that verses 2-6 of Jabberwocky were a loose parody. In addition to writing poetry and fiction, she also provided material for parliamentary reports on pauper schools. She lived for many years with her cousin Frank Smedley], acting as his housekeeper and secretary. She died at her home at Regent's Park, London, and was buried at West Norwood Cemetery. Writing Orlando Project: "Her poetry makes accomplished and at times innovative use of dramatic and lyric form in its treatment of historical and contemporary material. Her work is distinguished by its sensitive depictions of women's struggles for independent lives and effective action, its acute dissection of Victorian gender conventions, and its positive representations of feminism and unconventional femininity."Menella Bute Smedley, Orlando: Women's writing in the British Isles from the beginnings to the present, University of Cambridge. Web, Mar. 2, 2017. Critical introduction by Alexander Hay Japp Miss Smedley could not, on account of health, live in London, and resided for many years in that pleasant seacoast town Tenby. But though thus exiled from much that she delighted in, she was constantly at work. Considering the weak health with which she was so tried, she produced what formed a fair body of literature, and some of it reached a very high level. Her earliest volume of poems, Lays and Ballads from English History, is little known as her identity was disguised under the reversed initials, “S. M.”; but the poet’s touch is felt throughout in fresh images, lines of exceptional beauty, and sweet rhythmic effects, rare in such poems. Those on “Richard Cœur de Lion” and “Wallace” are very fine indeed. She wrote at least half-a-dozen prose stories, the most successful of which were, perhaps, “Twice Lost” and “Linnet’s Trial”; she contributed many articles to the magazine Good Words and to The Contemporary Review; and published at least 3 volumes of poems, besides those she wrote for children in association with her sister. If the poet is born and not made, Miss Smedley was by nature a poet. Not only was she gifted with imagination and the power of verse, but she possessed in no slight measure the dramatic faculty. Though in many of her earlier poems there was a decided tendency to mysticism, by which the human interest was veiled, or at any rate clouded, she managed, as she gained in experience, largely to escape from this. Many of her later poems are indeed imbued with fine human sympathy, and the loving imagination which clothes commonplace themes with beauty. Some of her sonnets on heroic workers — notably that on Bishop Patteson — if not strictly after the Petrarchan form, are very complete; penetrated by a lyrical spirit, and marked by a subtle music of their own. Here and there in her later work there are touches which recall to mind some of Alice Cary’s best work, though Miss Smedley was unacquainted with her writings. The touch of mysticism, tending sometimes a little to obscurity, which prevails in such poems as “A Little Fair Soul” and “Wind me a Summer Crown,” hardly prepares one for the realistic strength to be found in such pieces as “Hero Harold,” which, though suffused with the true ballad spirit, observes a polish that recalls Lord Tennyson’s “Lord of Burleigh”; while certainly the force and compact energy thrown into some poems written on striking events of the day (only a few of which were published in her volume of collected poems) give the idea of such decision, patriotic feeling, and width of range as only a few English women poets have shown. Miss Smedley, in association with her sister, Mrs. Hart, the author of Mrs. Jerningham’s Journal, and other tales in verse, wrote many of the poems in the volumes titled Child-World and Poems Written for a Child; and if she did not equal her sister in that quaint and sparkling glee which seems to accord with so much in happy childhood, she certainly surpassed her in fancy, in lyrical sweetness, and in all that goes to constitute true poetry. A delicious sense of music, and an airy fancy, are everywhere to be found in the sections of the book that come from her pen. The drama entitled Lady Grace has been declared by competent critics to be in some respects one of the best chamber-dramas ever written in English. It is original in construction, its incidents are nicely treated and adjusted to promote the movement of the piece, and it is full of careful delineations of character, with the nicest perception of the modifying effects of association and personal influence. A second volume, containing two plays, “Blind Love” and “Cyril,” published in 1874, though it showed great resource, with touches of rare music and melody, and a growing feeling for life, was not so successful — at all events, from a publisher’s point of view. Miss Smedley, as we said, wrote many prose tales full of originality, and remarkable for polish of style. The more notable are A Mere Story (1865), A Very Woman (1867), Twice Lost (1868), Other Folk’s Lives (1869), Linnet’s Trial (1878). from Alexander Hay Japp, Critical and Biographical Essay: Menella Bute Smedley (1820-1877), Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century (edited by Alfred H. Miles), London: Routledge / New York: Dutton, 1907. Bartleby.com, Web, Mar. 2, 2017. Publications Poetry *''Lays and Ballads from English History''. London: James Burns, 1842, 1856. *''The Story of Queen Isabel, and Other Verses''. London: 1863. *''Two Dramatic Poems''. London: 1864. *''Poems''. London: Strahan, 1868. Novels *''The Maiden Aunt''. London: 1849. *''A Very Woman''. London: 1849. *''The Story of a Family''. London: G. Hoby, 1851. *''The Use of Sunshine: A Christmas narrative''. London: G. Hoby, 1852. *''Nina: A tale for the twilight''. London: 1853. *''Linnett's Trail: A tale''. London: 1864; Boston: E. Loring, 1864. *''A Mere Story''. London: 1865. *''The Curate of Sadbrooke''. London: 1865. *''Twice Lost, and other tales''. London: 1866. **''Twice Lost: A novel''. Boton: E. Loring, 1867. *''Linnet's Trial''. London: Strahan, 1871. Juvenile *''Poems written for a Child'' (with Fanny Wheeler Hart). London: Strahan, 1868. *''Child World''. London; Strahan, 1869. *''Child Nature''. London; Strahan, 1869. Edited *''Boarding-out and Pauper Schools Especially for Girls: Being a reprint of the principal reports on Pauper Education in the Blue Book for 1873-4''. London, H.S. King, 1875. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.Search results = au:Menella Bute Smedley, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Mar. 2, 2017. See also *List of British poets References * Notes External links ;Poems *"The Little Fair Soul" in A Victorian Anthology, 1837-1895 *Menella Bute Smedley at PoemHunter (151 poems) ;Audio / video * Category:1820 births Category:1877 deaths Category:Burials at West Norwood Cemetery Category:19th-century English novelists Category:English women poets Category:Victorian novelists Category:Victorian women writers Category:English women novelists Category:19th-century women writers Category:19th-century English poets